Makana will finally appoint a new municipal manager. The news was announced at a marathon special council meeting yesterday afternoon with an agenda that ranged from an action plan to address the municipality's poor audit record to a report on the Innowind wind power project.
Makana will finally appoint a new municipal manager. The news was announced at a marathon special council meeting yesterday afternoon with an agenda that ranged from an action plan to address the municipality's poor audit record to a report on the Innowind wind power project.
"This is a very important Council meeting. We are about to appoint the accounting officer in this institution today," Mayor Zamuxolo Peter told councillors, officials and the media in the City Hall Council Chambers.
The announcement was to be made in a confidential section of the meeting, barred to the media; however, midway through the afternoon's deliberations, the Speaker announced the confidential agenda item, and a document was handed out among the Councillors.
Makana has been without a municipal manager since Ntombi Baart was suspended in June last year. There has been strong speculation, fuelled by talk in the City Hall corridors, that former municipal manager, Pravine Naidoo, will return to fill the hot seat.
Sources within the municipality earlier this year confirmed rumours that Naidoo was the preferred candidate at December interviews for the position. His previous term as municipal manager ended in 2007, among bitterness and controversy.
He'd spent six years as Makana's chief accounting officer and a campaign to be reinstated in that position ended in September 2008 with a hearing at the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration that ruled in favour of the municipality.
Also tabled in yesterday's special council meeting was the final auditor general's report. It is identical to the draft audit report on which Grocott's Mail reported last month, and which revealed that the municipality had earned yet another audit disclaimer.
The final report confirms the draft report's claim that there are employees who are paid salaries but cannot be physically verified; that there are incorrect service billings for consumers; that there has been irregular expenditure and that the former municipal manager did not sign a performance agreement.
Vindicating Grocott's Mail's reporting earlier this year on ghost employees, as indicated in the AG's findings, the final report repeats the concern that "not all salaried employees and wage earners selected for testing could be physically verified… I was unable to confirm the expenditure of R13.6m".
Also tabled for adoption in yesterday's meeting were the municipality's Audit Action Plan for 2012 and the draft Integrated Development Plan (IDP) and budget for the 2013/14 financial year, as well as a status report on the Innowind Wind Power generation project.
A Memorandum Of Understanding between the municipality and Mobisam, a water-monitoring project that uses cellphone messaging to collate data about water-quality, was approved.
A proposal to develop land between Hooggenoeg and the top of Fitzroy Street for government-owned rental accommodation was opposed by councillors Lena May and Brian Jackson, who said the site, currently occupied by the office of Ward 3 councillor Marcelle Booysens, should rather be made into a multipurpose youth centre. They were outvoted 2:18.
In our next edition, on Friday 5 April, we will fill you in on more things you should know about your city, arising from yesterday's Council meeting.
